Anglican Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu is perhaps the second-most popular and loved South African after our democracy's founding president Nelson Mandela.

Although he generally irritates the government complaining about behaviour he sees as similar to that of the old white government ousted in 1994, Tutu is the darling of your average Joe Soap in the street.

That was until recently. Last August he called for a "wealth tax" to be imposed on all white South Africans.

The former head of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Tutu said apartheid had left South Africans riddled with "self-hate", and this was directly to blame for the country's vicious crime rate and road carnage.

To say his head was almost cut off by thousands who hated his statement would be an understatement of grave proportions. In fact, his head could easily have been literally cut off. One online reader who responded to the story wrote: "I hope he dies soon."

Tutu went on to say: "Apartheid damaged us all; not a single one of us has escaped. You [white South Africans] all benefited from apartheid. Your children went to fancy schools, you lived in posh suburbs."

He stressed, however, that this did not mean all whites had supported apartheid.

Race has become the subtext of the South African story. Just under 18 years after black people were freed from formal oppression and a majority government was elected, the personality of this growing country is riddled with the subject of race.

If a Martian landed in South Africa tomorrow, read the newspapers and listened to radio talk shows, they would swear there was an ethnic war going on in the country. Social commentary hardly ever takes place without race taking centre stage.

Even some leading members of the governing ANC have been known to make incendiary and sometimes provocative racial statements or inferences, sometimes with seriously distasteful and unhelpful consequences.

But race consciousness and what others call race obsession in this country aren't without reason or justification. For the purposes of context, it will be helpful to look at some shocking statistics.

According to the mid-2011 estimates from Statistics South Africa, the country's population stands at 50.5-million. Africans are in the majority, making up 79.5% of the population, while white people and coloured people each make up 9% and the Indian/ Asian population 2.5%.

So black South Africans, including coloureds and Asians, form 91% of the population.

Yet, 70.7% of whites have completed high school, as opposed to 22% of Africans. The unemployment rate of the white population aged 15 to 65 is 4.1%, while 28.1% of Africans in the same age group are jobless, with the majority of them unemployable.

The median annual income of white working adults aged 15 to 65 is R65000 per annum, compared to R12000 for Africans.

White people generally still live in the best suburbs with services and amenities while millions of Africans still live in informal settlements with appalling or non-existent roads, ablution facilities, schools and health facilities.

In response to Tutu's call for a wealth tax, the cleric was soon reminded that only five million South Africans paid tax, the majority of whom are white.

Corporate tax, which is also a huge source of government revenue, is largely borne by white-owned companies. Statistics vary a little, but it is generally accepted that at least 80% of business is still white-owned in South Africa.

Logically - on the back of good education and healthy incomes - leading sportsmen, lawyers, bankers, tourists, savers, teachers and any other influential people other than politicians are white.

Race is an issue. Race does matter. Race defines the reality of South Africa. Yes there are many black people exploiting the issue of race for political purposes and subsequently damaging the critically important reconciliation project.

However, white South Africans are not helping the cause by denying that race matters. Their ready-made call for black people to "move on" and stop thinking in racial terms is not only fallacious, it is also, and mostly, self-serving and selfish.

When a 12-year-old only sees their kind begging on the street, living without water and electricity and unemployed, it is difficult not to think and see things through race-coloured glasses.

But unlike many other countries in the world where race does matter - although for different reasons - at least South Africans are (still) talking about it.

• Mabote is a government advisor. He writes in his personal capacity